- Local time
- 6:10 PM
- Posts
- 5,278
- Location
- Athens
- OS
- Windows 11 Pro 23H2 (build 22631.4249) test laptop, Windows 11 Pro v24H2 (build 26100.2894) main PC
Hello!
I recently tried to watch a video file on my smartphone using VLC player for Android and I had a black screen with audio! I thought the file was corrupt, do I tried it on my PC. It played fine there with both VLC player for Windows and MPC-HC. So I guessed there is something unusual with that video. A quick examination didn't shed any light, as the video was encoded with HEVC and the audio with AC3 and I had many other files with the same codecs that do play on VLC for Android. But a closed examination revealed that the video that didn't play was not a "regular" HEVC video (aka HEVC main profile), but an "advanced" HEVC video (aka HEVC rext profile). The "regular" HEVC is YUV 8-bit per color channel with 4:2:0 compression, while the "advanced" HEVC supports 10-bit or higher and YUV 4:2:2 or 4:4:4. Indeed the video that didn't play was YUV 8-bit per color channel 4:2:2. The reason was that I captured it with my TV tuner and compressed with M-JPEG YUV 8-bit 4:2:2, so when I converted it to HEVC I wanted to preserve as much as possible quality and chose to do it in YUV 8-bit 4:2:2 unaware of the incompatibility I would introduce...
hevc.hhi.fraunhofer.de
The solution is to play it in MX Player for Android with software decoding (not hardware acceleration). Using software decoding in MX Player for Android it plays smoothly and you can enjoy the "advanced" HEVC video on your smartphone. I tried to disable hardware acceleration on VLC player for Android but it doesn't decode YUV 4:2:2 properly and the image appears blocky with a lot of artifacts. So for "advanced" HEVC video files, I will use MX Player for Android with software decoding. For anything else, I can keep using VLC player for Android.
I posted it to help others with the same issue since Google search on the topic wasn't very helpful. Enjoy!
I recently tried to watch a video file on my smartphone using VLC player for Android and I had a black screen with audio! I thought the file was corrupt, do I tried it on my PC. It played fine there with both VLC player for Windows and MPC-HC. So I guessed there is something unusual with that video. A quick examination didn't shed any light, as the video was encoded with HEVC and the audio with AC3 and I had many other files with the same codecs that do play on VLC for Android. But a closed examination revealed that the video that didn't play was not a "regular" HEVC video (aka HEVC main profile), but an "advanced" HEVC video (aka HEVC rext profile). The "regular" HEVC is YUV 8-bit per color channel with 4:2:0 compression, while the "advanced" HEVC supports 10-bit or higher and YUV 4:2:2 or 4:4:4. Indeed the video that didn't play was YUV 8-bit per color channel 4:2:2. The reason was that I captured it with my TV tuner and compressed with M-JPEG YUV 8-bit 4:2:2, so when I converted it to HEVC I wanted to preserve as much as possible quality and chose to do it in YUV 8-bit 4:2:2 unaware of the incompatibility I would introduce...
HEVC Format Range Extension (RExt) | HEVC
HEVC Format Range Extension (RExt) resources
The solution is to play it in MX Player for Android with software decoding (not hardware acceleration). Using software decoding in MX Player for Android it plays smoothly and you can enjoy the "advanced" HEVC video on your smartphone. I tried to disable hardware acceleration on VLC player for Android but it doesn't decode YUV 4:2:2 properly and the image appears blocky with a lot of artifacts. So for "advanced" HEVC video files, I will use MX Player for Android with software decoding. For anything else, I can keep using VLC player for Android.
I posted it to help others with the same issue since Google search on the topic wasn't very helpful. Enjoy!
My Computers
System One System Two
-
- OS
- Windows 11 Pro 23H2 (build 22631.4249) test laptop, Windows 11 Pro v24H2 (build 26100.2894) main PC
- Computer type
- Laptop
- Manufacturer/Model
- Acer Extensa 5630EZ
- CPU
- Mobile DualCore Intel Core 2 Duo T7250, 2000 MHz
- Motherboard
- Acer Extensa 5630
- Memory
- 4GB
- Graphics Card(s)
- Mobile Intel(R) GMA 4500M (Mobile 4 series)
- Sound Card
- Realtek ALC268 @ Intel 82801IB ICH9 - High Definition Audio Controller
- Monitor(s) Displays
- 1
- Screen Resolution
- 1280x800
- Hard Drives
- Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB SATA Device (250 GB, SATA-III)
- Internet Speed
- VDSL 50 Mbps
- Browser
- MICROSOFT EDGE
- Antivirus
- WINDOWS DEFENDER
- Other Info
- Legacy MBR installation, no TPM, no Secure Boot, no WDDM 2.0 graphics drivers, no SSE4.2, cannot get more unsupported ;) This is only my test laptop. I had installed Windows 11 here before upgrading my main PC. For my main PC I use everyday see my 2nd system specs.
-
- Operating System
- Windows 11 Pro v24H2 (build 26100.2894)
- Computer type
- PC/Desktop
- Manufacturer/Model
- Custom-built PC
- CPU
- Intel Core-i7 3770 3.40GHz s1155 (3rd generation)
- Motherboard
- Asus P8H61 s1155 ATX
- Memory
- 2x Kingston Hyper-X Blu 8GB DDR3-1600
- Graphics card(s)
- Gainward NE5105T018G1-1070F (nVidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti 4GB GDDR5)
- Sound Card
- Realtek HD audio (ALC887)
- Monitor(s) Displays
- Sony Bravia KDL-19L4000 19" LCD TV via VGA
- Screen Resolution
- 1440x900 32-bit 60Hz
- Hard Drives
- WD Blue SA510 2.5 1000GB SSD as system disk, Western Digital Caviar Purple 4TB SATA III (WD40PURZ) as second
- PSU
- Thermaltake Litepower RGB 550W Full Wired
- Case
- SUPERCASE MIDI-TOWER
- Cooling
- Deepcool Gamma Archer CPU cooler, 1x 8cm fan at the back
- Mouse
- Sunnyline OptiEye PS/2
- Keyboard
- Mitsumi 101-key PS/2
- Internet Speed
- 100Mbps
- Browser
- Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox
- Antivirus
- Microsoft Windows Defender
- Other Info
- Legacy BIOS (MBR) installation, no TPM, no Secure Boot, WDDM 3.0 graphics drivers, WEI score 7.4
